This election has been a watershed event. The rich are going nuts. The fascist right wingers who hate 47%+ of us fellow citizens has gone ballistic to the moon and now even business men selling to sensitive hippies are going insane, eaten alive by rank greed. The latest one to fall off the social cliff is the guy who runs the Whole Foods scam. Yes, it is a scam in many ways, pious and prissy but exploitive when possible and what is exploited the most? The workers, of course. And being forced to contribute to the health care of workers is pissing off the rich owner who wants third world labor, not first world socialized medical care.
But we don’t have this. Obamacare isn’t this at all. Germany has it. Sweden has it, even the Brits, for god’s sake, also have it! Many first world countries including Israel have socialized medicine for everyone and the US is nearly alone persisting in a system where only some businesses give health care help to some employees while the vast bulk have to fend for themselves and of course, die. And they do die, our health statistics are virtually dead last in first world nations and even compared to many second rate nations.
The miserly new reforms infuriate rich people just as Social Security enrages gambling bosses and the entire GOP including Social Security recipients. They want to kill that tiny sliver of normal socialism. They want…something hideous that even the Nazis in Germany dared not do. That is, make America as nasty as a third world, failed nation so far as the bulk of the middle and lower classes are concerned. Here is the latest jerk screaming about being forced to provide healthcare to his poor workers who earn so little: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey Says He Regrets Comparing Obamacare To ‘Fascism’
Mackey compared Obamacare to “fascism” in a recent interview with NPR, saying that the government controls “the means of production” in health care. The comments sparked an outcry among Whole Foods shoppers, many of whom emailed The Huffington Post to say they plan to boycott the supermarket chain.
“I regret using that word now because it’s got so much baggage attached to it,” Mackey told HuffPost Live on Thursday. “Of course, I was just using the standard dictionary definition.”
Typical right wing non-apology. He is sorry he outraged his own customers by calling this feeble attempt at socialist medical care, ‘fascism’ and then goes on to say he was correct to do this because giving social care to anyone is ‘fascist’ according to the Right Wing Looney Dictionary he got from Karl Rove. This insane ‘Obama is a fascist’ and ‘Obama is a communist’ has to stop due to it showing how stupid our rich managers really are. They are dumb. The hysteria about workers getting even the slightest consideration has caused a collective mental breakdown.
Here are other jerks earlier who found out they are now being boycotted by the 52%+ who voted for Obama: Domino’s Pizza Founder Sues Federal Government Over Obamacare while Papa John’s Threatens to Cut Workers to Pay for Obamacare but Papa John’s Obamacare Stance Costs Company Its Reputation which hammered their bottom line and spanked the owner hard because Papa John’s losing business over CEO’s Obamacare rhetoric. And good riddance to that jerk and his business.
Then there are these delightful jerk corporations that want to kill their workers: Red Lobster, Olive Garden hire part-timers to avoid Obamacare. The list of corporations to avoid grows by the hour. Maybe we should simply boycott any business that is national until owners who think their workers need healthcare step up to the plate and tell us outright, how they plan to protect their workers and their families.
The best way to do this is to…COPY GERMANY. Or Britain. Or any country with real health care provided by government interference. We got shafted by the insurance companies and other lobbyists who didn’t want national healthcare on a single payer plan. No, the ‘reforms’ stuck to the stupid model that bosses were supposed to do this on their own. And we got stuck with this stupid system by the bosses who lobbied for this crummy system and are now whining about it and giving billions to the GOP to stop it and to stop it by providing NO SOLUTION what so ever. At all. They just want us to go and die. Quietly. With no cost overhead. Before we can collect Social Security or get onto the government program that is very popular: Medicare.
And THAT they want to kill and are spending lots of loot trying to kill this and are lobbying hard to kill this and want to kill this and this makes these jerks our enemies. They want us as dead as al Qaeda wants us killed off. And al Qaeda isn’t interested in killing us off unless we attack them. So we should leave them alone and send these rich jerks to Mali to be taken hostage or something. Then we can save them again. Sort of. Have the socialist French save them. Ha.
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Rage over Newtown school shooting tragedy tops 9/11 – theoaklandpress.com
I’m very disappointed in you. You never used to make knee-jerk accusations of racism against people for simply disagreeing with your political views. I’m sick to death of being told I’m a racist for not supporting Obama and his collectivist crap. Yeah, I’m so racist I voted for his lying ass in 2008. Then I realized that he completely misrepresented himself in the campaign. In fact, he & his wife are both real racists, and I’m not alone in saying so.
And for someone who prides herself on being such an astute scholar of history, politics, economics and human nature, you sure do drop the ball in constantly clamoring for the US to be like Germany, which is much smaller and with much less ethnic diversity. Socialism works best in countries of 25 million or less, with a 90%+ homogenous population. Germany makes it work because – well, they’re GERMAN. So far as the other, much-ballyhooed socialist countries in Europe, well, there is some reasoned disagreement with those of you who insist that your way is not only the only way but a paradise for all concerned: http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/5616.aspx
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ELAINE: Germany had a bigger minority population only Hitler and the Nazis murdered them.
As for socialism being evil: many of the happiest countries on earth happen to be socialist. And not due to racial purity. Due entirely to being happy they don’t have to suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune. Here in the US, many people want to have a Darwinian capitalist system where people who are ‘useless feeders’ are left to die. Forgetting how one can easily become a ‘useless feeder’ themselves.
‘Racist’ is a fairly new word, as words go. [less than 100 years old].
I see it as a marxist term, used to shame and silence White people.
And it has been very effective. However a lot of Whites are shedding
the shackles of guilt.
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ELAINE: Racism is a concept that was created to justify slavery back when Europe and the US were doing ethnic cleansing or enslaving foreign people who looked different from Europeans.
The idea of tribalism on the other hand is very ancient. And is anti-social in that it is all about dividing up people according to what tribe they belong to and the discriminating against them.
Whole Foods. Once I saw a jar of Tomato Sauce at WF.
I looked at the price tag. It was 15? dollars.
I live in a building in Manhattan because it it adjacent to a Whole Foods. My vegan animal-rights wife insists on shopping at Mackey’s store.
We will have to have a discussion about the balance between ‘animal rights’ Whole Foods fare and ‘Human Rights’ voting with one’s wallet for our fellow man.
Trader Joe’s, here we come.
You don’t have to go to Germany,come up to Canada to see our single payer system.Costs to the taxpayer are about half of the USA,everyone is covered for $68 per person per month.If you can’t pay that you’re on Welfare that pays.No middle men(your insurance companies who’s CEO’s make $50 million a year cutting people off life saving treatments.)
What’s not to like?Who could possibly argue this is a bad thing?
The few times I have had to use the system I have been impressed.
People have enough to worry about today without wondering if they can afford medical treatment.
Prominently displayed in Whole Food is Mackey’s book ‘Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business’. From a review over at Amazon: that it “creates value for all stakeholders: including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment”. Seriously.
When you and I were children, Elaine, the hospital in our town was a public service, typically underwritten by the city and one or more local churches. My home town had a Catholic hospital, a Baptist hospital, and a Presbyterian hospital.
And hospitals were not expected to operate as profit centers. They were expected to mend broken bones and remove diseased appendices…
Now, it’s all about the financialization of everything. Even insane things like fire departments. America has gone insane.
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ELAINE: Correct. And municipal hospitals were starved of funds so they became hell holes. Then the same people would turn around and say, ‘Look, it doesn’t work!’
At the age of 64 I was out of work. I went in for some medical tests that led to an angiogram and then to a triple coronary bypass operation. If I had been living in the U.S. I probably would have lost my house and had to declare bankruptcy if I got the operation at all. But I live in Canada. Everything was covered by the government run health system. (Scary SOCIALISM ). This is a system that I paid into all my working years through taxes so it’s not “free”. But bye God it was there when I needed it. The idea that a handful of Insurance companies in the U.S. have a strangle hold on the health care system and siphon off billions is lunacy. Americans are brainwashed that this so called “Free Enterprise System” is the best in the world. Rubbish!
Yes, the problem with libertarianism is it doesn’t understand the need to have general social systems to keep us all safe and alive. That is, nationalized healthcare means fewer epidemics, fewer tragedies. I watched a Brit TV series on Hulu called ‘The Real A&E’ about their emergency rooms and it was amazing.
NO PAPERWORK. Here, if you are in an accident, before they take the bleeding bodies to a hospital, paperwork is immediately demanded and has to be signed and cards shown to show who will pay, etc.
And then there is the parade of paper pushers in the accident and emergency rooms pestering patients and their families for information so they can be billed.
While I am not blessed with a nearby Whole Foods, almost all the chain grocery stores in this area are pushing the “organic” foods and veggies.
As best as I can discover, the meaning of “organic” is higher priced and shipped from out of state.
Yes, Whole Foods is not ‘Organic and Local’.
Hospitals? ‘ And hospitals were not expected to operate as profit centers’.
Indeed, but hospitals have [always?] been designed for Doctors, not
patients.
They are designed basically by insurance companies and must conform with these companies in order to function.
Jim R is correct. Our society has gone insane. There is no going back.
Trade deficits, debts, obligations, etc. — these things mean nothing to sociopaths (“Debts don’t matter”). They are only interested in themselves.
The number of sociopaths in America has been estimated by psychologists at about 4 percent of the population, or 12 million people. Guess where they all are? Anything that involves power, authority, money, and influence will attract them in swarms.
Ancient peoples knew about them. They were easily discovered in small groups. For example, the Inuit referred to them as “those whose minds know what to do but do not do it”. Eventually, they would force a sociopath to go hunting and then when no one was looking, they would push him off the ice into the freezing water. They knew they could not cure him. They had to protect their women and children from his depredations.
With so many places to hide or “reinvent themselves”, sociopaths now run amok among us. When exposed, they simply move on.
There does not appear to be any human solution in sight.
@ Lucky 13
” ‘Racist’ is a fairly new word, as words go. [less than 100 years old].
I see it as a marxist term, used to shame and silence White people.
“And it has been very effective. However a lot of Whites are shedding
the shackles of guilt.”
Speak for yourself, white man. Considering how you spoke to and about women and people of color, you should have been ashamed.
You know what I see? Whenever a white guy does not get what he believes he should be getting, then he thinks there is a problem in the world.
It is this entitlement mentality that has to go.
Also, please note: A lot of “Leftists” are shedding the shackles of guilt, too. Look at how white men throw around terms: “Fascist! Socialist! Haters of whites! etc.” Why? Trying to shame “The Left” and to frighten the clueless with the Bogeyman. But, it’s ok when they do it, because “The Left” aren’t giving the white guy his entitlements, so he is now entitled to call names.
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ELAINE: And the ethnic cleansing, endorsed by Jews in Israel, continues its ugly growth as people everywhere assume we have to be viewed as racial and religious and ethnic entities and not citizens! ANYONE can be a citizen in the US unlike Israel which is racist and religious bigotry. I do NOT endorse racism and bigotry. My grandson is ‘mixed race’ and I love that fact and mixing up types of people and having them all interact heavily is great for society, great for humanity and wonderful in the long run.
Enclosed, tribal groups leads to genetic weakness, illnesses, lack of intellectual stimulation, stagnation, hostility and murderous wars aimed at physically wiping out rival tribes. Civilizations have mixes and circulation and interactions and the ghetto walls in Israel shows us the end point of racism, tribalism and all that.
Employers absolutely LOVE the fact that the US has, by far the most expensive health care system in the world. It enables them. Gives them powerfull leverage over their employees. Right now, the US has a “lose your job, lose your healthcare” employment system. Employers love it; it justifies their miserly wage increases; They can use expensive healthcare costs to explain such small pay increases. Also, the lose your job, lose your healthcare system allows employers to force their employees to work much longer hours than their peers in other developed countries.If people could move from job to job–because they could retain their healthcare coverage, there would be ALOT more job hopping by employees. Sooner or later, employers would have to up their benefits packages to keep their good employees happy. You can, without ANY doubts at all, rest assured that if the Business Roundtable or the US Chamber of Commerce wanted nationalized or a single-payer healthcare system, they would not hesitate to promote it. There also can be no doubt that those two lobby groups are very powerful in Washington DC. They WOULD be heard. Now to the Pizza guys. These guys are like the big multinationals, but on a smaller scale. They don’t like cost increases of any kind. They also know that if, for example, Taco Bell offers their employees healthcare coverage, THEIR employees are going to go work at Taco Bell, not Papa John’s or Domino’s. The result will be that, sooner or later, Domino’s and Papa John’s will have to compete with their competitors who DO offer healthcare coverage. Gee whiz, I thought the Free Market was all about fair competition?
All you have to do is read someone like Noob’s comments, and you see who the real HATERS in our society are.You can see they don’t bother to hide their hate for white men. Actually they believe themselves morally superior .They reflect EVERYTHING they accuse “white men ” of being guilty of. Just an observation .
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ELAINE: People don’t like bullies, generally. We are watching in amazement and horror as dozens of white male bullies with guns scream about killing us if we stop them from buying 50 bullet gun clips so they can spray bullets.
I believe in the idea that a nation as prosperous as ours can provide a safety net for those who TRULY cannot provide for themselves. The problem comes in, for instance, when a woman has 5 different kids with 5 different men, knowing full well she will never be able to provide for them, and blithely expects the government – aka the taxpayers – aka her neighbors – to foot the bill. The fact that this is not widely regarded as an abuse of the safety net in America is why socialism like you advocate it simply cannot work here. In Germany, for example, such a woman would be shamed and shunned by the vast majority of the population. But in our rush to de-stigmatize the children of such activity (which is correct, in my view; the kids had no control over how they were conceived), we also de-stigmatized the parents. That has not been a good thing for society.
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ELAINE: And this is why the NRA/GOP gang wants to eliminate access to birth controls and abortions! Right! HAHAHA.
What environment creates such mothers? Why do they see getting a bunch of kids as a survival strategy?
John, whats the name of the ‘reality show’?
Googgle ‘desmond Hatchett has 30 kids’
and
Oxygen Media and DiGa Vision: Cancel Shawty Lo’s – Change.org
http://www.change.org/…/oxygen-media-and-diga-vision-cancel-shawty-lo...
Jan 9, 2013 – Oxygen Media and DiGa Vision: Cancel Shawty Lo’s “All My Babies’ Mamas,” a show that stereotypes and demeans black children, mother etc.
Elaine, do you keep any birds for eggs or eating?
“The problem comes in, for instance, when a woman has 5 different kids with 5 different men, knowing full well she will never be able to provide for them, and blithely expects the government – aka the taxpayers – aka her neighbors – to foot the bill.”
That’s a Reagan stereotypical myth that has been perpetuated since 1976 about single black mothers as the Cadillac driving Black Welfare Queens. He essentially targeted social programs that had provided for the common good of women with children. His deliberateness in the unethical slash and burn policies of women and childrens social safety net systems was seen as a politically effective tool to transfer funds toward the military industrial complex, special projects, and cut taxes for the wealthy. Under the guise of the “Black Welfare Queen,” Reagan’s political strategies devastated the welfare of women and children.
Capitalism dictates Women’s labor inside the home as unpaid labor. To add insult to injury, her labor in the marketplace is underpaid compared to her male counterpart. The GNP and the GDP claim women’s pressed labor: childbirth, childcare, housework, and management of the family’s life cannot be determined. Therefore, women committed to the challenging work of motherhood, home, and all that it entails have been conveniently categorized by capitalism as “free” and valueless. The opportunistic economic paradigm of winners and losers is platformed upon the free labor of women. The institutionalism of capitalism unfairly abuses and punishes the creators of life and nurturers of civilization.
Without women’s biologic and psychologic inclination to procreate, humankind would cease to exist.
Kiyoshi Inoue Professor
Chinese documents marked Diaoyu Islands
http://www.skycitygallery.com/japan/diaohist.html
@rps:
You called her black. I didn’t. Actually, she is available in every flavor. She’s MADE by the government’s entitlement system – and it’s my assertion that she’s made on purpose, because her existance empowers government.
Fix that, and then get back to me on your American socialist utopia.
The right wing is up in arms against poor women who have babies all over the place…and then insures this happens by trying to eliminate health care for women via Planned Parenthood, screaming at women who get abortions and refusing to fund birth control via health care insurance programs.
@ John
No, what I said was Reagan targeted African American women and used the country’s history of bigotry and gender discrimination against a minority population to destroy ALL programs that supported all women and children.
Currently, there is an existing American socialist utopia for Men and their patriarchal institutions that rests upon the unpaid “labor” of WOMEN.
Luce Irigaray explains the woman’s position within patriarchal societies in the book This Sex Which is Not One. Part of her argument describes the socio-cultural status of women, “In our social order, women are ‘products’ used and exchanged by men. Commodities, as we all know, do not take themselves to market on their own…..So women have to remain an “infrastructure” unrecognized as such by our society and our culture” (84). Clearly, women are in a situation of specific exploitation with respect to male centric exchange operations: sexual, economic, social, and cultural. In other words, women are the commodified foundation of the dominant patriarchal profit structure. Irigaray’s theory concludes that a woman only becomes relevant when designated as ‘utilitarian objects and bearers of value’ in exchanges among men.
FYI, women and children are the majority of Americans living in poverty.
Correct and the main reason they can’t get married anymore is economic: the jobs of the middle class male workers in manufacturing is mainly overseas now or pays very little in the former slave Southern states so it is uneconomical to try to raise children as far as males are concerned.
‘Capitalism dictates Women’s labor inside the home as unpaid labor.’
And Communism does not?
“Correct and the main reason they can’t get married anymore is economic: the jobs of the middle class male workers in manufacturing is mainly overseas”
Due to Clinton and NAFTA.
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ELAINE: Clinton signed NAFTA but the GOP right wing back then, voted heavily for it and only part of the Democrats did that.
Women average .77 cents for every dollar earned by men-and African American women and Latinas fare even worse. Most women with young children work outside the home, and thus, these children are warehoused/babysat for profit in childcare centers. Patriarchal economics doesn’t operate for the benefit of civilization but is a profit-driven model that has created an economic class ladder system to benefit the top and impoverish the bottom rung of the ladder. by stealing and/or undervaluing labor.
As Thomas Paine said, “The rugged face of society, checkered with the extremes of affluence and want, proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it, and calls on justice for redress. The great mass of the poor in all countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible for them to get out of that state of themselves.”
Compound this with the fact that women have been the life-long recipients of gender-economic discriminatory actions. Ask why, rather than accepting it as the way patriarchal civilizations have violently plundered women’s labor and lives.
How many women raise their hands and say, “I want to be discriminated against based on my female anatomy?” Because I was made a woman based upon male-centric gender codes and practices, I have a pre-determined risk factor that creates a higher risk level of living in poverty.
John, the system is rigged to maintain women’s subjugation and men’s superiority. Men callously point negative fingers at women’s biological ability to procreate as the cause of women’s poverty rather than deconstructing a rigged economic system with property laws that have deliberate built-in triggers to subjugate women with sub-triggers of race and class. Let’s not forget the adversity women face about choices and then denied pro-health and reproductive choices as anti- women demand that women’s bodies and choices must be government owned and controlled. Men don’t wonder about their autonomy, yet women must fight to become the owners of their own bodies. Don’t you find it strange that women’s limited choices includes an economic model that forces them to give-up their child or live in poverty or both.
People are hungry for an explanation for the unprecedented inequalities in this country, and it’s far easier to blame individuals than it is to indict the policies and culture that have structured people’s lives, particularly women’s lives.
Clinton’s 1996 PRWORA and 1977 TANF welfare reform laws destroyed mostly women and children’s safety nets. It increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters, and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely. It moved mothers and children from welfare to work, but many of them aren’t making enough to survive. Many of them were pushed off welfare rolls because they didn’t show up for an appointment, because they couldn’t get to an appointment for lack of child care, said Department of Health and Human Services Edelman, or because they weren’t notified of the appointment.
PRWORA dismissed the value of the unpaid work of raising a family, and insisted that mothers get paid work, “no matter how dangerous or abusive their domestic situations are, or how poorly paid due to limited economic opportunities and sub-standard educations in poverty areas.
“… it’s far easier to blame individuals than it is to indict the policies and culture that have structured people’s lives, particularly women’s lives.”
Ahh, but I do blame the policies. The individuals are merely doing what they should be expected to do, given the circumstances. Homo Sapiens is an apex preditor, and like all apex preditors, will not expend any more effort than absolutely required.
I agree with the assessment of the Bible-thumping Right put forth here, both by you & Elaine. But I’m not one of them. My beef with the Left on contraception is the assertion that taxpayers foot the bill. An individual is entirely responsible for being prudent with their sexuality. If you can’t afford the kid, or the irth control, keep your pants on. It’s not that hard, unless you have no self-control, in which case, I fail to see why society should be forced to shoulder the burden of upkeep for you & your carelessly conceived offspring.
The bill for contraceptives is tiny. VERY tiny. Infintesimal. The cost of producing unwanted babies who end up criminals, for example, is hideously expensive so if you sole problem is cost, the most cost-effective form of crime prevention is birth control.
Agreed.
However, entities like the Catholic Church (which I am no fan of, BTW), who disagree morally with the very concept of contraception, should not be forced to provide it to their employees. If someone is that determined to have their employer pick up the cost of safeguarding their promiscuity, they can work for someone else. As the cost is so low, they can provide it for themselves, or stay celibate.
The key, as usual, is requiring individuals to assume responsibility for their actions, instead of trying to put training wheels on life, or restricting the rights of those who did not commit the crimes. We can debate how best to go about that, but I don’t see another reasonable solution.
Yes, they DO have to provide it. What if you had the misfortune of working for a Scientologist or a Christian Scientist or someone who believed in Voodoo magic?
Are they then allowed to force you to have their creepy cures????
What if your boss thinks ALL medical care is wrong? Sheesh.
I am for the GOVERNMENT giving us all the same insurance package. Then, if you don’t want modern care, you are free to abstain. But if the rest of us want modern care, we get it in full. Not part. What if women decided prostate cancer care should be eliminated? Or anything ailing the penis (yes, this happens to men!)? This is a long, nasty road to death, guys.
The Catholic Church has ZERO right to dictate medical care and what gets covered. Period. They can exit the country if they want religious dictatorship like they imposed on Italy or much of South America for many generations.